This past weekend, I received an email from Blizzard Entertainment informing me that my account password had changed. The email went on to state that if I had requested the change, to disregard the email. But if I did not request the change, then I would need to contact Blizzard immediately in case my account had been compromised. I did not request the password change, so I got a bit worried. I tried to log onto my account on the battle.net website, and surely enough, my password was no longer valid. Someone had actually somehow hacked into my battle.net account! This freaked me out. Read on to see what transpired…

Luckily, as the account was still my email address, I was able to reset the password and log back into my account. When I logged in, the first thing I noticed was that the person who “hijacked” my account started the World of Warcraft Wrath of the Lich King 10 day trial. I am basically speechless that someone would do that. Does this mean that they’ve already logged in as one of my characters? Ugh.

I called up Blizzard’s customer support (and waited for 45 minutes) before actually getting through to someone. Once I did, she was able to verify that someone did get into my account, and that the person was in China. Wha? How did some Chinese gold farmer get into my account? And did they take all my moneys? How did they do that? I’m slightly concerned that this gold farmer was able to gain access to my WoW characters, but because I don’t play it much anymore it’s not as big of a deal. What bothers me is that on my battle.net account, all of my Blizzard games are registered there with their CD keys. I guess he now has CD keys to my copies of Starcraft and its expansion, Diablo II and its expansion, and Warcraft III and its expansion. Grr. At least this was before I bought Starcraft II, because that would be a problem if my Starcraft II key was compromised.

What did I do next? I ended up downloading all of the updates just to load WoW to see if the hacker did any damage (and hopefully kick them out as well once I logged in). All of this was over an hour after the password change request, and by the time I logged in, the damage was done. My main and basically all my alts were naked. Anything that wasn’t soulbound was sold and my inventory and bank accounts were practically empty. What was odd was that on my main, I had almost 1000 gold. I wondered if I really had that much when I quit playing, and if not, did that mean I took control of my account before the hacker was able to transfer the money elsewhere? I did notice a couple letters in my mailbox that consisted of something like 50 g each for the sale of Pristine Black Pearls or something at the Auction House, so it looks like the hacker put some of my stuff up for sale.

Fortunately, I think Blizzard deals with this all the time, so I was able to petition a GM and inform them that my account was hacked and all of my gear and items were basically sold. I actually thought about it for a little while if I wanted to get the GM to restore all my characters, because now I at least had nearly 1000 gold on my main. Maybe that was compensation enough? In any case, I ended up doing it because I felt that having no gear at all at that level would be too difficult if I were to want to play again.

Hours later, I got emails informing me that my characters had been restored. I logged into my main and apparently, if your characters were hacked and you lost all your gear, you get letters with gear attached to them. I think I got maybe 7-8 letters with 12 attachments each. It was pretty crazy to keep opening more and more epics. I also noticed that I had over 700 gold once my main character was restored. So what happened to all the money? Was the extra 250 gold on my hacked main a result of just all my epics being sold at a vendor? I was also surprised that the hacker had gone onto my level 2 alt that I used to store all my snowballs. Apparently they were all sold, because my alt got maybe something like 400-500 snowballs back in the mail from the GM!

In any case, looks like everything is restored, and I have changed the email and password to my Blizzard account. I still ask myself how the hackers did it though. How did they find my account? I doubt I have a keylogger installed on my machine and I have firewalls, spyware scanners, etc. I never fall for these stupid phishing scams, and I haven’t even played WoW or visited a WoW website in months. Did they just brute force guess my passwords?! And how did they get my email? I’ve never been successfully hax0red before, so this is all a little startling to me. I’ve since proceeded to try to change my passwords for every login of importance, but even then, it’s quite a harrowing task and now I need to actually implement a system for managing all of my accounts and passwords. So for those of you that are reading, I recommend you update your passwords from time to time – those Chinese gold farmers must be expanding to hacking now to try to meet their weekly gold quotas!

I had a hard time determining my five most anticipated titles for 2010. This may have to do with the fact that not a lot of stuff has been announced for the second half of the year or the fact that maybe there’s just too many sequels coming out in 2010 that I’m not completely interested in. While I should be more excited about them, I’m thinking I’m just mildly anticipating them because many of them could potentially suffer from either a new development team behind the sequel or the first game wasn’t so great to begin with. I loved Dead Rising 1 and BioShock 1, but with them both being developed by different studios, who knows how they will turn out? And will Lost Planet 2 and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2 be that much better than their relatively mediocre predecessors? Of course, Assassin’s Creed 2 was an awesome follow-up, so there is hope.

In any case, to recap on my most anticipated titles for 2009, the list included: Steet Fighter IV, Dragon Age: Origins, Bayonetta, Alpha Protocol, and Starcraft II. Only the first two from my list made it out in 2009, and both were highly respected games. Bayonetta also just released at the beginning of the year to good reviews as well. Now that I have it in my hands, I hope to get some time with it and will share my thoughts on it soon. Alpha Protocol got a “stealth” delay to this year, meaning there was no announcement of any sort that it got delayed so some people even found out on the day of release that the game was delayed to summer 2010. While I anticipated that game a lot last year, this year it’s off my list. Starcraft II is still on my list for 2010, but what are the other four?

Final Fantasy XIII (360, PS3)
Outside of Starcraft II, Final Fantasy XIII is no doubt my most anticipated title of the year (from what has been announced so far as a 2010 release). I grew up on Final Fantasy, played through practically every single one of them (except Final Fantasy VIII – ugh for some reason I just could not enjoy that one). After the masterpiece that was Final Fantasy X on the PS2 and its lovable characters like Wakka, Riku, and Lulu, we had the MMORPG FFXI (which I tried briefly but did not enjoy), and the single-player MMORPG FFXII. I must have put in 60-70 hours into Final Fantasy XII, but at the end of the day I just didn’t really like it too much. The characters were not developed and the story was boring – FFXII ended up being a single player RPG that I could not get attached to, which is a big no-no for RPGs in my book. I’m hoping all of this changes when Final Fantasy XIII releases – sort of “righting the ship” and bringing the franchise back on course. I remember Square did the same thing when FFVIII was a little too out there for the Final Fantasy fans, so they brought things back to the classic gameplay with FFIX (which I did enjoy a lot). I hope FFXIII returns the Final Fantasy franchise to grace like FFIX did.

Resonance of Fate (360, PS3)
I like RPGs. For any of you longtime readers of the blog, you probably know that by now, and so I’m sort of concerned that Sega has decided to release Resonance of Fate on the same day as Final Fantasy XIII here in the states. It’s going to get demolished. But why is Resonance of Fate on my list of 2010 anticipated titles? It’s developed by tri-Ace, the studio behind the Star Ocean series, the Valkyrie Profile series, and Infinite Undiscovery. Contrary to what anyone will say about Infinite Undiscovery, I still enjoyed it a lot. Resonance of Fate seems to have a look and polish rivaling that of Final Fantasy XIII, and not only that, but the game is being directed by the planner of a couple of my favorite PS1 games: Final Fantasy Tactics and Vagrant Story. What also is a little different about this game is that it’s not going to be fantasy based, but rather, the characters are going to be using firearms in a more modern setting. The last time I played an RPG with firearms in a more modern setting was Parasite Eve, so I’m anxiously awaiting to see if Resonance of Fate takes elements of all of these classic PS1 RPGs I loved and brings them to the current generation.

Medal of Honor (360, PS3, PC)
This is a surprising pick for me, as I didn’t come up with this until I serious scanned the list of titles for release in 2010 for this article. EA’s Medal of Honor series has gone downhill ever since several employees left the team to create a studio named Infinity Ward, most famous for Call of Duty. The last Medal of Honor game released for this console generation, Medal of Honor: Airborne, was pretty bad. What has me most interested in this game is that EA has decided to bring the Medal of Honor franchise into modern day combat, having the game take place in present day Afghanistan. EA’s plan is to directly compete with the Call of Duty franchise, which means in order to do that, Medal of Honor will have to be a triple-A title. If EA wants to make a modern warfare game better than Modern Warfare 2, I’m all ears and I would love to see what they have in store. It’s also coming out at a good time – about a year after Modern Warfare 2 so maybe by then I’ll be ready to try something different for my online multiplayer needs. Apparently DICE, the studio behind the Battlefield games and Mirror’s Edge, will be handling the multiplayer for Medal of Honor. One thing that worries me is that with another franchise jumping into the modern combat train, does this mean the modern warfare genre will get over-saturated and go the way of WWII games? And is DICE going to do anything different for the Medal of Honor multiplayer besides stick Battlefield’s Conquest mode into it? I guess we will see this Fall.

Elemental: War of Magic (PC)
Stardock is my new favorite PC gaming development studio, and although I was less than pleased with Demigod, I think Elemental: War of Magic is the next big title from what the studio excels at: the 4X strategy game. I’m still slowly making my way through Stardock’s Galactic Civilizations II: Ultimate Edition, and prior to that I  thoroughly enjoyed the Civilization games (not by Stardock though). Each of those franchises has the 4x strategy gameplay applied to different genres: Galactic Civilizations II goes more sci-fi with the space and future route, while Civilization 4 goes more accessible with the historical and modern route. Elemental: War of Magic will bring the 4x strategy genre into the fantasy realm, and as someone that enjoys my fair share of RPGs, I am quite interested in seeing how I will be able to apply 4x strategy to a game where magic and dragons exist. What’s also piquing my interest about the game is that I’ll be able to recruit heroes, explore dungeons, and amass treasure. Just how much of this game is 4x strategy and how much of it is RPG? While the cell-shaded graphics are a little bit offputting for me, I think this new combination of 4x strategy and RPG may be just the type of gameplay combination that I’m interested in trying out.

Starcraft II (PC)
Starcraft II was the only game that both cmfl3x and I had on our respective 2009 anticipated titles list, and it continues to remain as the only title in common for our 2010 anticipated titles list. I’ve played my fair share of RTS games ever since Starcraft was released over a decade ago, but since then, nothing has compared (although Warcraft III was excellent in its own way). Even today, I have Starcraft installed on my netbook and not only does it run perfectly, but it still is as good as when it first came out. Hearing the sound of your siege tanks switching into siege mode just doesn’t get old. What I also love about Blizzard is that the studio makes its games compatible with the Mac from day 1, so I’ll be able to still play this game with those of my friends that decided to convert to the mac route (sellouts!). Like Modern Warfare 2, I believe that Starcraft 2 has potential to bring several of my gamer buddies out of retirement and ready to go back into arranged team matchmaking. It can’t release soon enough.

Crazily enough, this site has been around for over a year already. Looking back, I noticed that my first ever post was on my top 5 most anticipated games of 2009, and here I am, anticipating 2010 with two repeats from that list. That’s kind of sad, but at the same time my excitement keeps building and I am hoping all these games live up to the hype…in my mind.

The games I listed last year were Mass Effect 2, Starcraft 2, The Conduit, The Beatles: Rock Band, and Halo Wars. Halo Wars and The Beatles: Rock Band turned out to be pretty awesome, The Conduit, not so much, and Mass Effect 2 and Starcraft 2 are still MIA. So what am I looking forward to this year?

Mass Effect 2 (360, PC)
As I replay Mass Effect for the game club and look at coverage for the sequel while counting down the days to January 26th, my anticipation is reaching a fevered pitch for this game. Yes, the first one definitely had issues, especially combat wise, but supposedly the combat is supposed to be more “shooter-like” and there are supposed to be a lot more options in dialogue. I’m also super excited to see how decisions I made in the first game affect the second. Here’s hoping BioWare delivers again: I believe!

Miles Edgeworth: Investigations (DS)
I’m a huge fan of the Phoenix Wright series, and this March Miles Edgeworth, the lead prosecutor in many of the games, is getting his own game! I have no idea what this game is about or even how it’s going to work, although I hear you won’t be in the courtroom anymore. Who cares? As long as Miles Edgeworth brings the same brand of wacky humor as the rest of the Ace Attorney series, sign me up. And if you’ve never played the original, even though it’s near impossible to find on DS, you can now pick it up on Wiiware for $10!

Splinter Cell: Conviction (360, PC)
Although I’m more of a Metal Gear Solid fan, I’ve still been a casual fan of Sam Fisher and the Splinter Cell franchise. It was starting to get stale, so in the fifth iteration Ubisoft has decided to try something new by introducing a new objective system that seems really interesting. To keep the player immersed, objectives will be placed on walls or parts of the environment (as opposed to needing to pull up a menu or having someone constantly update your objectives). There are also some new bells and whistles, like the ability to know where an enemy thinks you are and the ability to mark targets behind doors for attack (kinda like Rainbow Six Vegas 2).

Heavy Rain (PS3)
Regulars to the site may have heard me talk about Heavy Rain before, but since we mostly cover Xbox stuff, you may not know too much about the game. Heavy Rain is a very different type of game. You play as one of four characters who are trying to hunt down a serial killer called the Origami Killer. The best way to describe it is it’s like watching a movie but getting to control the characters in it. If one of the protagonists dies, you take the shoes of another, and everyone dying can lead to “The End.” You are supposed to be able to play through multiple time with different outcomes. Anyway, I’m excited because this is supposed to be a “mature” evolution of games, so even if it doesn’t turn out well, hopefully it will push the industry forward. Now, how will I get my hands on a PS3…

Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty (PC)
Sigh. I was just going to grab the text from last year, but that made me too sad. Blizzard STILL hasn’t announced when this game will be coming out, so I will be even more depressed if I’m writing about this again in 2011. Anyway, Blizzard just announced that the Protoss will be playable for a short section in the single player campaign, so I’m looking forward to that! Every single video or screenshot that comes out of this game makes me more and more excited, so hopefully it will come out…ever…please?

Just Missed: Zelda, Metroid: Other M, Bioshock 2 (again)

Please Valve, do not release Left 4 Dead 3 in 2010!

With cmfl3x and me going on a blogging holiday break starting tomorrow, this entry will be our last post for 2009! Similar to cmfl3x, I also several holiday wishes for 2010 but I’ve narrowed it down to three possible wishes that would make me a happy gamer next year and they all relate to sequels: BioShock 2, Starcraft 2, and Left 4 Dead 3 (well, Left 4 Dead 2, to be more exact).

1. BioShock 2 Turns Out to be Just as Good as the Original
BioShock was my favorite 360 game of 2007. The combination of action, storytelling, RPG, and length made it the perfect single player gaming experience for me. With the game being released  only about a month and a half from now, I’m trying to get more excited about the sequel but at the same time, “bracing” for impact in case it falls short. What worries me is that BioShock 1 was led by Ken Levine, the Creative Director at 2K Boston. The sequel is not being developed by 2K Boston, but instead by the newly formed 2K Marin without any of Ken Levine’s input. Furthermore, BioShock 2 will have multiplayer modes developed by Digital Extremes, a company that isn’t exactly making a huge name for itself with its only recent title being Dark Sector.

A new studio behind a sequel to many players’ 2007 game of the year along with multiplayer modes being added to a game that should not have multiplayer has me worried. If I had three gaming wishes for 2010, one of them would be for this game to be just as good as the first. Often times a good sequel to a game is the result of the developers of the original game learning what worked and didn’t work in the original, and using their intimate knowledge of the original game to craft a better sequel. After all, the sequel really should just be an extension of the first game right? Now that a new studio is taking over the sequel, there’s a lot of odds against it turning out just as well so I’m hoping it doesn’t come out as a dud like Devil May Cry 2.

2. Starcraft II Releases in 2010 (and consequently, the beta arrives by summer)
For many Blizzard RTS fans, it was a tough year in 2009. We started getting all of this information about Starcraft II, saw videos of different matches, and there was indication that we would have been playing the Starcraft II beta in the summer of 2009. Apparently Blizzard was too ambitious with what they wanted to do in the total redesign of battle.net, and thus we are now waiting with baited breath until the new battle.net releases so we can hear word about the Starcraft II beta. If the beta doesn’t hit by summer of 2010, we may not see the retail release until 2011.

For me, the release of the Starcraft II beta is practically the release of the game. I remember playing the betas of Warcraft III and World of Warcraft months in advance of the retail releases, and the transition from beta to retail was practically seamless – I just needed to go out and actually buy a physical copy of the disc. Please Blizzard, get your new battle.net working so all of us can enjoy Starcraft II in 2010. And if we’re enjoying Starcraft II in 2010, it’s possible we could then be enjoying Diablo III in 2011!

3. Left 4 Dead 3 Is Not Released in 2010
For my final gaming wish next year, I’ll wish for Valve not to release another sequel to Left 4 Dead. This is somewhat of a loaded wish though. What I’m honestly wishing for is that Valve devotes its Left 4 Dead franchise resources to improving upon the two games already out before putting out another sequel.

Left 4 Dead 2 is a great game. Valve, can we have more time to enjoy it before it becomes obsolete like the first one? If Valve continues to pump out Left 4 Dead sequels, that honestly means not enough effort is being put into supporting the original games. I don’t care if Valve claims that it’s possible to develop both downloadable content for the existing games and work on Left 4 Dead 3 at the same time. If you’re putting your resources on the sequel, that’s less people being devoted towards making new content for your existing products and I would argue that Left 4 Dead’s “content” suffered for that same reason.

The announcement of the Left 4 Dead 1 survivors appearing in a Left 4 Dead 2 DLC campaign next year is a step in the right direction, but is far from a full integration that many Left 4 Dead fans are dreaming of. Instead of churning out sequels, why not figure out a way to bring the two worlds together? I know it’s too much to ask to put the Survivors from each game in each others’ levels and even mix the Survivors together (too many new lines), so my more “reasonable” desire is to see Left 4 Dead 1 and Left 4 Dead 2 stages all being selectable in Left 4 Dead 2. If you pick a Left 4 Dead 2 stage, you have to play using Left 4 Dead 2’s survivors, and if you pick a Left 4 Dead 1 stage, you have to play using Left 4 Dead 1 survivors. Just getting everyone to be able to play all nine campaigns (or 10, with Crash Course) with the same disc would be the ultimate Left 4 Dead experience, much like being able to play Rock Band 1 songs in Rock Band 2. I feel that this is a reasonable way to unite the two games and it would go a long way towards making fans see that Valve is putting as much effort into supporting the Left 4 Dead franchise as it is with Team Fortress 2.

World of Warcraft & Team Fortress 2 continue to give PC gamers updates

It’s interesting for me to see the “evolution” of the PC gaming landscape. Growing up on Doom, Quake, and Duke Nukem, I’ve lived through the rise and decline of the PC gaming scene, from the introduction of first person shooters, real-time strategy games, online multiplayer, 4X strategy games, and now MMORPGs. If you’ve also grown up with fond memories of Doom & Quake, I highly recommend checking out the book, Masters of Doom. It’s a well-written book that chronicles how John Romero and John Carmack met, formed id Software, and completely shook up the gaming industry. Having said that, today’s entry will contain my more general thoughts on the PC gaming landscape, and why I’m still excited for its present and future.

It’s funny to see how the last twenty or so years in gaming went – PC games spawned new PC games such as FPS and RTS games, and introduced multiplayer gaming. I remember the days of 3DFX, Voodoo cards, and OpenGL. Since then, consoles have really grown up. FPS gaming and multiplayer on consoles have pretty much caught up to PC games, albeit the lack of certain extras among many of them such as free content updates, dedicated servers, etc. RTS games and 4X strategy games are still in their infancy on the consoles, and I can’t really see them taking off too much due to the fact that while the lack of a mouse for a FPS game is not nearly as bad as a lack of a mouse in a RTS/4X game where you’re just navigating around a map. Still, games like Halo Wars and Civilization Revolution are trying. I’ve yet to see a true console MMORPG yet on the 360 outside of Final Fantasy XI (ugh), so maybe we have a ways to go before that starts happening.

In any case, it looks like the PC gaming scene has changed drastically, forming silos around specific companies and their storefronts. Whereas the 360 has the Live Marketplace and the PS3 has the PSN store, there is no real unifying Windows store. Microsoft finally released a Windows Live Gaming store this past week, but it’s far too late and the Windows “Live Gaming” scene is practically dead anyway. I’m appreciating what each of these major PC companies are doing to not only keep PC gaming alive, but to really set themselves up to be the saviors of PC gaming.

The first and most prominent company to keep things going is Valve. If you’ve played Half-Life, Counter-Strike, etc. then you’re probably someone that  can’t dislike the company. Nowadays PC gamers have Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead 2 to play, and while Valve has not quite delivered what they promised in their support for the Left 4 Dead franchise, Team Fortress 2 just continues to ridiculously grow. You can pick up Team Fortress 2 for only a couple dollars these days on the PC, and yet the developers keep adding more and more content. I played through Team Fortress 2 on the Xbox 360, and that was just a barebones version. On the PC, new updates come out all the time, with new weapons and customizable gear for each class, maps, hundreds of new Achievements, and all sorts of gameplay/balance changes. With the newest update, Valve is giving players the ability to customize their hats and weapons for their equipment slots, bringing this FPS game more and more into the realm of MMORPG. It’s fantastic and if you’re a Team Fortress 2 PC gamer, this is a game that just keeps on giving. Kudos to Valve, as Team Fortress 2 on the PC really demonstrates the difference between a PC FPS and a console FPS.

The other company that has been keeping PC gaming relevent for as long as I can remember is Blizzard. People still play Starcraft, Diablo II, and Warcraft III today, and excitement continues to build for the future releases of Starcraft II and Diablo III. While I’ve mentally moved on past World of Warcraft, the newest patch and the upcoming expansion are really making me reconsider jumping back into the game, as the most recently released patch adds full-on matchmaking for dungeons, which means you can easily find a pickup group through an easy to use in-game interface rather than going to town and shouting “LF1M healer”. The upcoming expansion has the developers revisiting the core gameplay world and changing many aspects of that rather than adding in a new continent like Lich King did. In a sense, it is going to bring the WoW population back to the core world, which has been a ghost town since the Expansions. Perhaps when the Cataclysm expansion hits, I may have to check WoW out again.

Stardock is a company that isn’t as strong as Valve or Blizzard but still has PC gaming relevance. In fact, outside of Blizzard, Stardock may be among the last major PC gaming companies that has not started making console games. I’m playing through Galactic Civilizations II Ultimate now, and while it’s not exactly a new game, it’s one of the best 4X strategy games I’ve ever played and I can’t imagine seeing a game of this depth and strategy on a console. The competition that Stardock’s Impulse store gives to Valve’s Steam storefront is a boon for us gamers, as it not only makes the two storefronts compete for our gaming dollars, but each store continues to introduce new features that make you feel more like part of its community. While I didn’t feel that Sins of a Solar Empire had as much depth as Galactic Civilizations II, Stardock continues to work on expansions to this game, to the pleasure of its many fans.

Another company that seems to support the PC gaming scene surprisingly is EA. Of course, the entire Sims franchise has been a huge moneymaker for EA, so they can’t be that against PC gaming. I have the new Command & Conquer 4 Beta installed on my PC, perhaps the last of the franchise that will be coming out in March. Also in March is Battlefield Bad Company 2, a PC FPS game that will support servers – something that the Modern Warfare 2 PC version took away. Let’s also not forget about Dragon Age: Origins, the new RPG game that supposedly plays a lot better on the PC than either of the console versions. So as much as anyone may dislike EA, we can see that the company is still keeping the PC hardcore gaming thriving with their string of varied PC titles: a RTS game, a FPS game, and an RPG game.

Finally, this past week I’ve written about a couple different DotA games, and aTOM boomb has shared his impressions on a couple as well. In any case, I feel like the DotA genre will continue to grow like the Tower Defense genre did. Both genres originated as custom mods in Blizzard’s RTS games, and they will most likely do quite well for PC gaming. I would be interested in seeing a FPS + DotA combination game on the 360, but that may be a few years out.

In any case, while I do tend to spend more time on the 360 than the PC for my gaming, the PC gaming scene is far from dead and I have not only these major companies to thank, but all of the others that still recognize PC gaming and continue to provide us with solid titles that not only play best on the PC, but make use of the PC’s strengths as a gaming platform as well. 2010 looks to still be a big year with PC gaming, as Starcraft II has to come out…right?!

Last night’s battle was amazing because over half of it we played 2v1. Normally, playing 2v1 should be a huge advantage, but the player who was left was obviously much better than us and he had us on the brink of elimination multiple times. It was a match that my partner and I never thought we were going to win until we finally did, and afterwards I was so tired I didn’t even really want to play anymore. Major props to our opponent, and I am incredibly sad that Halo Wars does not support replays.

What does support replays, however, is Starcraft 2, and the media has been asked to submit their beta requests by June 19th, so my anticipation is building. I really hope the game supports matchmaking, though I don’t know if Blizzard does that sort of thing. One of Halo Wars few advantages over the original Starcraft is that I don’t have to type 2v2 Lost Temple!!!!!! every time I want to play. Regardless, I am confident Starcraft 2 will live up to its pedigree and I cannot WAIT.

Perhaps one of the best GBA games most people will never get to play?

Mother 3
On my new commute to work these days, I am now playing Mother 3, which is the sequel to Earthbound (Mother 2) here in the United States. Apparently, the game was never released in America due to several reasons such as it being a bit too controversial for children (it looks cute but its storyline is mature), too many potential copyright infringements (the music team behind the Earthbound games love the Beatles, among other things), and it is a Gameboy Advance game that released in Japan when the DS already took off in the States. Suffice to say, the only way to actually play this game is by downloading a fan translation that patches the Japanese version of the game. It’s a stellar translation and Nintendo isn’t telling the group to cease and desist because the company decided not to release the game in the US, so no one holds the copyright. The translation group has even gone one step further and put together a 240 page full color guidebook with tons of original art and is selling it for $20. I almost want to buy the guidebook just to support their effort, but the thing about guidebooks with me is if I buy one, then I will have to depend on it as a crutch the rest of the game since I’ll worry I’ll miss something so I’d rather just play it freely. Plus, I’m in the subway and I’d be a little embarrassed reading a strategy guide and playing the game at the same time on my way to work.

Dawn of War II
I spent most of this week’s gaming time finishing off the campaign for Dawn of War II, but I haven’t had a chance to try out multiplayer enough to warrant a review. I’m surprised though that Steam is telling me I’ve already logged 40 or so hours into this game, so suffice to say, the game is pretty lengthy on the hardest difficulty. Review will definitely be out next week as this weekend should give me some extra needed time to spend with the multiplayer.

Defense Grid
Been playing this a bit this week since it’s on sale for $5 and I’m actually enjoying it a lot. It does a great job in the first few levels of keeping things simple and slowly adding more enemy types and towers to use. I also like that there’s a feature for speeding up the enemy movement, so you’re not always sitting around waiting when you don’t have enough to make/upgrade towers. Great deal at $5 and I’ll try to write some detailed impressions up for it next week.

Starcraft
Starcraft rounds out my heavy PC gaming week, as I’ve gotten back into the PC gaming side pretty strong thanks to Steam’s sale, Dawn of War II, and the impending Starcraft II release. Now that the Starcraft II beta is imminent, I’m continuing to play the game to brush up on its mechanics. Having completed the Terran campaign, I’m now knee deep in the Zerg campaign. All these memories keep coming back as I play this game – one of my more memorable aspects of playing Zerg that I got to experience again is having 4 Hatcheries next to each other and spawning a full hotkey of units at once.

Apparently it’s PC gaming week for me this week, as I’ m in the midst of moving and my 360 is packed so I’ve spent my hours this week with the following:

Starcraft – Believe it or not, I have gone back and installed Starcraft and Brood War on my PC. (I also re-installed Diablo II and Warcraft III as well, but for now I’m just sticking with Starcraft.) After watching the new Starcraft II Battle Report that was released recently, I’ve gotten totally excited about the game and decided I want to play through Starcraft’s campaign missions  to “get back into the game” before the inevitable Starcraft II beta releases in the months to come (which I hope I get picked for). It still holds up today, and I’m already almost done with the Terran campaign. Man those siege tanks bring back memories. I don’t know what it is, but building clumps of a siege tank, a turret, and a bunker full of marines really makes me happy. It doesn’t look like siege tanks are in Starcraft II though, which make me quite sad.

Dawn of War II – I’m really enjoying the campaign mode for the game. I think I’m almost done, but I must have spent over a dozen hours of gaming already since I’m playing at the hardest difficulty. And it is honestly pretty difficult. But after playing Starcraft some and realizing that there’s no difficulty setting in the campaign, the difficulty of Dawn of War II was a welcome change as now I’m actually being challenged rather than steamrolling the AI. This is the first game that has challenged me in a while – maybe not as crazily as Left 4 Dead on Expert, but this is a game I do need my full concentration for. Hopefully I get around to the multiplayer at some point next week.

Dead Rising 2 - About time! Hope with the new developer it’s as good as the first one was.

Infinite Undiscovery - Wow. The game is actually a lot more enjoyable on these harder playthroughs. Who would have thought?

Starcraft - had a dream about it this past week. Talk about crazy – I haven’t played it in years, and here I was dreaming I was in a RT 2v2 mirror match with a Terran and Protoss on both sides. After an initial skirmish with my Terran and the enemy Terran, all was pretty quiet as I massed ground units. My Protoss partner was massing Carriers, and apparently so was the enemy Protoss player. I soon discover that the enemy Terran player was massing Battlecruisers, but I’m stuck with all these siege tanks and no air. Great. I plop down 4 Starports (where did I have this kind of money?) and begin massing Wraiths. I then send my squads of Wraiths to take out his Battlecruisers, and scan once in a while to take out the enemy Observer. Not sure how it ended up but then the alarm went off and I woke up. What the heck kind of dream is that? I don’t remember the last time I actually dreamed I was playing a game, especially in this much detail. It wasn’t even like made up stuff that would occur in a dream – all of these Starcraft game mechanics were still quite present and adhered to.

What’s up all? cmfl3x here. I recently volunteered to contribute some material to Leveling Down so I’ll be making posts every once in a while. A little bit about myself, and like espion4ge I’ve been gaming since the 8 bit era. Some of my favorite games from previous generations are Final Fantasy IV, Super Mario 64, Punch Out!, and Goldeneye. As you can see, I was a huge Nintendo fan. I still am, but am pretty disappointed in their offerings for the Wii right now.

As for current systems, I own a XBox360, a Wii, and a DS, although I lent my Wii to my fiancee. With a 360, I obviously play a lot of first person shooters, and I also enjoy RPGs like Fallout 3 and Mass Effect. Other than that, you should probably know that story trumps all other aspects of games for me, so if I like the story I can forgive annoying gameplay errors or bad graphics. Although everyone seemed to think Grand Theft Auto IV had a great story, which I disagree with. GTA had a promising story, but it was way too long and drawn out. But I digress…

Anyway, like espion4ge I put together a list of titles that I’m looking forward to this year. If you guys think we should have added anything to our lists, feel free to post in the comments! What are you excited for?

Halo Wars (360)
I’ve been in love with the Halo universe since the beginning. But the biggest thing about first person shooters is that they never feel very realistic. Sure, Master Chief is a genetically enhanced super soldier, but still, taking down the Covenant AND the Flood practically singlehandedly? In Halo Wars, hopefully, we’ll get to take part in the grand battles between the Covenant and the UNSC (and the Flood!) This is a game that I HOPE is awesome, but I’ll have to wait and see if they can pull off.

Mass Effect 2 (360, PC)
While not officially announced for 2009, most people think its presence at GDC this year means it will be out by the end of the year. True story: I totally scratched my Mass Effect disc, so I ended up buying another one. I was so engrossed in the story that I didn’t want to stop and spent (not wasted! well, maybe wasted) another 60 bucks. I loved Mass Effect’s sci fi story, the voice acting, and the relatively open universe. Up until Fallout 3, Mass Effect was my favorite RPG on the system. I’ll put my money on Bioware delivering an excellent sequel (but hopefully not 120 bucks this time).

Harmonix Beatles Project (360, PS3, Wii, PS2)
Right now, Rock Band is the class of the music game industry and Harmonix stands out as one of the most brilliant, successful, and cool developers out there right now. Harmonix has developed the quintessential party game, and now they have pulled in one of the most popular bands of all time. I don’t see how this game WON’T be amazing for people who love the Beatles. It’s a testimony to the power of the video game industry that this game will be the first time Beatles songs will be offered digitally at all. To celebrate, they should invent a piano peripheral to go along with the game so that we can jam to Hey Jude.

Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty (PC)
The only game espion4ge and I have in common, I’ve been waiting for this game for over 10 years. I was never that competitive, and I definitely don’t have the time to get into it, but I am looking forward to the continuation of the single player story and seeing what’s become of Raynor, Kerrigan, and the others. Blizzard has yet to make a game that isn’t amazing, and I’m sure Starcraft 2 will be no exception. Are they bleeding us a little bit by releasing 3 episodes? Sure. But at the same time, I do trust that the overall experience will be enhanced, because Blizzard has no past history of just adding “filler”. I am thinking about buying a new computer just to play this game, and I know I’m not the only one thinking about it. Talk about anticipation.

The Conduit (Wii)
This game is on the list because I would like to play my Wii at least once this year, and this is my best chance. Metroid Prime: Corruption had such an excellent control scheme that I thought publishers would be lining up at the door to make FPSes for the Wii. But it turns out that it’s much easier to make money selling millions of copies of games like WiiFit and WiiPlay. Thus the Wii has been labeled the “casual” console by gamers, and 3rd party publishers have been focused on “casual” type games that sell. High Voltage and Sega are taking a huge risk with this game, so I hope a) it’s good, and b) people buy it. But I’ll settle for just a), because then I’ll have a reason to get my Wii back from my fiancee.

Last Game Cut: Bioshock 2

A prequel to the 2006 game of the year sounds somewhat cool, but it’d be even cooler as a more open world experience if you could observe AS Rapture is degenerating. I doubt that the game will be that because that’s too risky, plus 2K Boston and Ken Levine are no longer involved, so I’m skeptical. But, if they can somehow recapture Bioshock’s magic…I’m there.